


This Kind Of Magic

by Niham87



Category: Lovecraft Country (TV)
Genre: Explicit Language, F/F, Femslash, Flirting, Fluff and Angst, Fondling, Kissing, Mentions of Episode 1x08 Events, Post-Episode 1x08, Thirstina, bathtub shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:48:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26896216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niham87/pseuds/Niham87
Summary: Ruby and Christina come to terms after a fatidic night. (Post-1x08)----“What kinda magic brings one back from the dead without a scratch on them?” Her hand dunks into the water, now just warm enough to please, her indicator tracing the rugged edges of her Mark. “Well... ‘cpet this one.”“Mine,” Christina states simply, truthfully.“The kind you’ll teach me?”“If that’s what you want.”“I want you, goddamit.”
Relationships: Ruby Baptiste/Christina Braithwhite
Comments: 30
Kudos: 188





	This Kind Of Magic

**Author's Note:**

> I'm taken with these two. I'm wearing my full clown suit already.  
> Also, this is my first femslash, had to find the right pairing to take my virginity. Couldn't think of a better one.  
> I'm on tumblr under the same name, in case some other clowns wanna throw a party!  
> Hope you enjoy.

“Where were you?”

Ruby’s singsong tone lilts through the door's gap before Christina is even able to set foot inside. She stands in all her voluptuous glory by the parlour’s bar, back turned, two fingers of something brown in a snifter. 

Christina blinks in slight confusion, veering the door to a close with the small of her back, handle noshing at her clammy shirt. “Out.” 

“The Captain and his men riddled Winthorp House full of holes. Was that you? Did you cast one of your sordid spells to get rid of us? That’s what that _shit_ I put in his office was for, right?” 

Christina scowls, further addled. “What?”

”Don’t even,” The glass thuds against the wood, the liquid billows side to side and Ruby’s bronze orbs connect with hers through the mirrored cabinet, embezzling Christina’s already short of sorts breath. “I know Tic gave you the key. That’s all you ever wanted, right?”

“Ruby, no. It isn’t like that, not anymo—”

“I said don’t! No more lies.” Ruby turns, snapping on her heels with the fury of a hurricane. The wrath dies just as abruptly, as soon as she regards her. “What in the... what happened to you?”

Christina looks down, to the tattered disarray of her clothes, fingers thrusting into the matted, bloodstained mess of her hair. “It’s nothing.”

“You’re bleeding,” Ruby roars like a lioness, already slaughtering her way over. From destroyer to protector in the flash of a second, _that’s her girl._

Christina can’t help the cocksure tug of her lips. “Not anymore.”

“Are those... _bullet holes?”_ Ruby pitches, eyeing the two smudged chinks in her shirt.

Christina seizes the small of her wrist before she could reach and feel the mark that her belly yields. “I said I’m okay.”

The tone is harsher than she’d intended and Ruby’s jaw cinches like a belt. Whatever wall had crumbled conjured back, brick by brick, with a magic that had nothing to do with Christina. 

_Fuck._

She leans onto the other woman’s forehead, her dark skin a blanket of comfort to the mugginess of hers. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. But I promise you... that wasn’t my doing.”

Ruby exhales, eyes closed for a second, their breaths mingling for an eternity, so much that Christina begins to tremble, that all she wants to do is lay her in bed and bury herself in that velvet-like interior of hers, dissolve in its softness. “You’re shivering... did that asshole do this to you?”

Christina waggles her head. It turns out almost dying was a more traumatic ordeal to the mind and body than she had anticipated. 

“I need to get out of these. I’ll deal with Lancaster soon enough. Trust me.”

“He’s dead. They all are. This fucking _thing_ came outta nowhere and just—” Ruby shook her head as if trying to erase the memory.

“Atticus’ incantation held,” Christina muses with a sneer. It took her a couple of tries until she got it right herself, but what’s the surprise. At least, Ruby wasn’t hurt.

“If I don’t ever have to see one of those again…” 

“Hey! Shoggoths are adorable, mischievous but adorable.”

“Adorable my black ass!”

Christina’s lips part beneath the tip of her tongue. “Indeed.”

“Don’t you be looking at me like _that_ when you can’t even hold yourself together, Miss Thing.” 

“I’ll be fine,” she assures, squeezing at the tender of Ruby’s hip.

Ruby snorts unconvinced. “You don’t look fine to me.”

“Did I ever lie to you?” she snaps. And right, that was far from the right thing to say, and Ruby tenses almost instantly under her touch. 

“I don’t know, did you?” 

Christina sighs, thumb grazing at Ruby’s inner wrist. “No.” 

She yanks it away, something dark that Christina recognizes as hurt glazing the woman’s eyes.

“I want to believe you, Christina, I really do. But you ain’t making it easy when you keep hiding shit from me.” 

She rips her wounded brown eyes from her, stripping something off Christina’s in the process. And as Ruby nudges through the gap between her and the door, she knows she has to stop her, that the further she slips away the harder it will be to gain her back.

“I almost died tonight.” That works. Ruby’s hand rattles on the doorknob along with her breath. “I thought I did for a second.”

“What?” Ruby pivots in utter disbelief.

“I paid two men to beat me, shoot me, tie me to a cotton gin fan with barbed wire and dump me in the river so I could feel your pain... somehow.” 

“Are you out of your damn mind?” Ruby snarls.”That’s not what I meant! At all!” 

“It doesn't matter..." she husks, gaiting closer to Ruby now, so close their noses are a wisp away. “Do you know what I found out as I choked on my blood and fought to breathe while fists and feet chomped on me?"

Christina can't help but fall into those staggering dark pits that Ruby has for eyes. To relish in the slight trembling of her lips.

"That it didn’t make a fucking difference how scared and furious I was. I was still going to die as alone and heartbroken as I’ve been all my life. And when I thought I would die, Ruby... my only shame was that I couldn’t make you feel safe anymore. So, yeah… It’s true. I’ll never understand how you feel but I’m still guilty of wanting what I’m not supposed to have. Of coming back for it. For you.” 

She didn’t even notice that she’d bulldozed her way in and pinned Ruby against the wall, that her willowy body was moulded onto the buxom of her curves, that their breasts danced to the wild same rhythm. But she does now. And her lips part, almost expectant. 

“So please, don’t question my loyalty when you are the one who keeps doubting yourself.” 

Ruby’s eyes dance sensuously to her mouth, and for a second there she’s sure it’s going to happen, that Ruby is ready. 

She diverts her mouth instead, and Christina retches away from her body, like she’s a brand on fire. One that makes her the exact opposite to the Mark of Cain, vulnerable. It would have hurt way less if she’d wrenched her ribcage open and ate her beating heart through the gristle.

Christina has no idea how she doesn’t crumble right there. It’s the years of practice, perhaps, that keep her face straight. After all, how many times has she been rejected? How many times can one’s heart gash and scab until it becomes a callus? She has no answer, for either.

“You better go,” she mumbles, scrambling her way up the stairs out of sheer will-power. 

And as her fingers grasp to the golden swan faucet and run the bath, the more it sinks how really tired she is. She flays out of her dried-crisp clothes with the same rage she shatters the husk of William’s skin. She’s been tired for one thousand years. Tired of being inadequate. Tired of always lacking something, no matter who she is, what she does.

The steam rises around her, and she eyes the seductive round bed. The urge to crawl in-between the silk of the sheets and curl into herself almost unbearable. She sinks into the bathtub instead. The water is so hot that it would probably boil her if she didn’t bear the Mark. She crams her eyes shut and dips her head under. 

She will be enough. She will carve that for herself, in blood and bone. In five days, at the autumnal equinox. When she accomplishes what her father or any other man has never been able to. Immortality. 

She reminds herself that Ruby was all but a distraction, never part of her plan. A happy accident, something that she should be glad for, like William had turned to be. Something to cherish but not meant for possession. Not meant for her.

She holds her breath long enough for that thought to pack every cell of her body as the water does with her pores. The last thing she expects to find as she resurfaces, is the source of all controversy, perched at the bathtub’s edge.

The woman’s dark eyes glaze her like molasses, from the tips of her toes to the taut, dusky pebbles of her nipples, where they linger for a sultry moment. The soft of Ruby’s hand cradles the curve of her neck, the scrape of her red lacquered nails sending shivers down Christina’s spine, quite a divergency to barbed wire. 

“What kinda magic brings one back from the dead without a scratch on them?” Her hand dunks into the water, now just warm enough to please, her indicator tracing the rugged edges of her Mark. “Well... ‘cpet this one.”

“Mine,” Christina states simply, truthfully.

“The kind you’ll teach me?”

“If that’s what you want.”

There was no hesitation, only the slight quaver of her red lips. “I want you, goddamit.”

Then her lush mouth downs on hers, and God, it’s everything that Christina has dreamt of and more; far more lenient against the swell of her own lips than the slenderness of Williams’, her tongue someway sharper, her flavour somehow crispier. 

Water splatters everywhere as she grasps to her knees, groaning as Ruby suckles at her bottom lip. She scrapes to her feet, hauling Ruby through a fierce lock of lips, and drips out of the tub, soaking her clothes.

They back into the bedroom, a clash of limbs and lips, speckling small pools of water throughout the hardwood floors and decadent Persian rugs. Christina unfastens the tiny buttons starting at Ruby’s cleavage with gained expertise, mouthing at the succulent curve of her jaw. Ruby moans, shimmying somehow closer, fingers digging into her ribs in a way that drives Christina into a hiss at the woman’s clavicle. The belt heaped next, allowing the patterned dress to find its way to the floor. 

Christina ogles the exposed swell of Ruby’s breasts all teased up in a mauve bustier, and the curve of her belly, clad in matching knickers. It could be the prettiest thing Christina had ever laid eyes on, hadn’t she behold Ruby in her uninterrupted, naked and wanting magnificence. 

She needs that now, to have Ruby keening under her very own skin. But she knows better. She reaches for the nightstand and grabs one of the potions there.

“No!” Ruby says, swiftly enclosing her fist and potion within her palm. “I said you. Not him. _You. Just you.”_

The drab thump of her heart hurls into a sudden wicked canter. “Are you sure?”

“It’s been a hell of a month, and If I’m sure about anything is this... I want your skinny white ass. Now.” 

_Well, fuck, another first._

Christina takes her luscious mouth with renewed need. It’s like swallowing a swarm of flapping butterflies and having them dashing their way down one's core. Glorious.

Only Ruby Baptiste to do that, create magic where it isn’t warranted.


End file.
